Important Books & Reports

Glyphosate/Roundup, falsely claimed by Monsanto to be safe and harmless, has become the world’s most widely and pervasively used herbicide; it has brought rising tides of birth defects, cancers, fatal kidney disease, sterility, and dozens of other illnesses - more

Ban GMOs Now - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Dr. Eva Sirinathsinghji

Health & environmental hazards
especially in the light of the new genetics - more

Living Rainbow H2O - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

A unique synthesis of the latest findings in the quantum physics and chemistry of water that tells you why water is the “means, medium, and message of life” - more

The Rainbow and the Worm - the Physics of Organisms - Dr. Mae-Wan Ho

“Probably the Most Important Book for the Coming Scientific Revolution” - more

Biofuels and World Hunger

Biofuels are conservatively estimated to
have been responsible for at least 30 percent of the global food price spike in
2008 that pushed 100 million people into poverty and drove some 30 million more
into hunger, according to the report, Meals per gallon, released by the UK charity ActionAid in February 2010 [1]. The number of chronically hungry people now
exceeds one billion.

The report
blames the biofuels targets set by the European Union (EU), and concomitantly,
the huge financial incentives given to the biofuels industry, which together,
provide a powerful driver for industrial biofuels. In 2006, the EU biofuel
industry was already supported by tax exemptions and agricultural subsidies to
the sum of €4.4 billion. In 2008, EU member states committed themselves to a
target of 10 percent of transport fuels from renewable sources (i.e., biofuels)
by 2020. If the same level of subsidies continues, the industry would receive
€13.7 billion per year.

If all global
biofuels targets are to be met, food prices could rise by up to an additional
76 percent by 2020 and starve an extra 600 million people.

Fuel vs food

The main agricultural
crops used for industrial biofuels are vegetable and seed oils such as palm,
soy, sunflower, rapeseed, and jatropha for biodiesel, maize, wheat and sugars
for ethanol. Except for jatropha (see later), the feedstock are all food crops.
The most immediate effect of the push for industrial biofuels is to compete
with food for feedstock, thereby inflating food prices. The Food and
Agricultural Organisation estimates that in 2008/9, 125 million tonnes of
cereals were diverted into biofuel production. In 2010, more cereal (1 107
million tonnes) were diverted into animal feed and industrial uses than for
feeding people (1 013 million tonnes). Overall, world food prices increased by
75 percent from 2006 to the middle of 2008, but the price for staple food
grains (such as wheat, rice and maize) went up by 126 percent. For the 82 low
income food deficient countries, import bills shot up. Each 10 percent increase
in the price of cereals adds nearly US$4.5 billion to the total cereals import
cost of developing countries that are net importers. Independent analysts have
concluded that industrial biofuels have been responsible for 30 to 75 percent
of the global food price increase in 2008.

To make matters much worse, huge tracts of land have been taken out
of food production, exacerbating landlessness everywhere (see [2] ‘Land Rush’ as
Threats to Food Security Intensify, SiS 46). ActionAid reports that
[1] in just five African countries 1.1 million hectares have been given over to
industrial biofuels for export; while 1.4 million ha were taken over
simultaneously to produce food for export. As biofuels displace food from
agricultural land in developed countries, and as rich countries run out of water
for agriculture, food production is increasingly outsourced to cheap land
available in poor countries [2].

Food and fuel are competing everywhere for land. EU companies have
already acquired or requested at least five million hectares of land for
industrial biofuels in developing countries [1]. Just to meet the EU’s ten
percent target would require 17.5 million hectares for growing biofuels in
developing countries.

Landlessness
and hunger

While driving
up food prices can create hunger, driving people off the land that they have
traditionally cultivated deprives them of the last resort of growing their own
food. This is happening all over the developing world.

In Mozambique, farms are destroyed for industrial biofuels. Elisa Alimone Mongue, mother and
farmer said: “I don’t have a farm, I don’t have a garden, .. the only land I
have has been destroyed. We are just suffering with hunger, .. even if I go to
look for another farm, they will just destroy it again.”

“They
actually took the land when it was already tilled…They haven’t paid us
anything… What we want is to get our farms back because that is what our
livelihood is dependent on… we are dying of hunger and there is nothing we have
that is actually our own.” Matilde Ngoene, another mother and farmer said.

Julio
Ngoene is fighting to save his community and its way of life. He is the village
chief of approximately 100 households of more than 1 000 people. A biofuel
company is setting up a project near his village and has taken over 80 percent
of the village farmland without permission, and destroyed the crops. At the
beginning of the project, the company promised to resettle the village, but two
years later, Julio and the villagers have still hear nothing, and no one in the
village has received compensation.

Land
expropriation is sometime violent, and often by false promises and trickery.

In Indonesia, in the village of Aruk, people have come into direct confrontation with palm oil plantations. Twenty-five plots
were cleared without permission. One villager lost his 10-acre plot. “I went
to my land one morning, and found it had been cleared. All my rubber
trees, my plants had been destroyed… Now I have to work as a builder in Malaysia, so I can feed my three children.”

In Tanzania, where ActionAid has conducted interviews, 175 villagers
have been displaced. Farmer Rashidi Omary Goboreni said: “We deeply regret we
agreed on letting [the biofuel
company] operate on our land. Now we think the employment and the possibility
to use their tractors was only their strategy to get the agreement… We realised
we did not know if we had agreed on selling our land or leasing it for 50 or 99
years. A neighbour told us he had leased his land for 99 years and we got
worried. What is hiding behind the 6 000 schilling [about €3 as an initial
payment], we wondered? If we do not get employed then how will we make our
living? Without land we will not be able to farm and our children will have
nowhere to settle down when they grow up. I’ve heard stories about other
villages who have leased their land and the villagers there are now not even
allowed to pass their land. If they pick up firewood, someone from the company
will tell them to put it back.”

The Chair of the UN Forum on Indigenous Issues estimated that 60
million indigenous people are globally at risk of displacement because of
industrial biofuels.

The jatropha
scam

There have been
warnings against jatropha biodiesel going back several years [3] (Jatropha
Biodiesel Fever in India, SiS 36). Jatropha has been hyped as a
miracle non-food biofuel crop that would simply grow in marginal areas not
suitable for food crops. But there was clear evidence that it would only
deliver anywhere near the promised 1 300 litres of oil per ha when grown in
fertile land with plenty of water, and that’s what companies have set their
eyes on.

In Tanzania, jatropha is being grown in areas with good rainfall and fertile soils. In Sahel
regions of Senegal, jatropha will only survive with irrigation; and it’s a
similar story in Swaziland, which is suffering persistent drought.

Jatropha
is also promoted as offering employment and livelihoods. But the evidence is
otherwise. Employment is often sporadic, being labour intensive during planting
and very little until harvesting. In India, where jatropha is becoming well
established the promise of high yields has remained unproven regardless of
whether they are grown on fertile or poor soils. The initial forecast was that
it would only be cost-competitive if yields reached 3-6 tonnes of seeds per ha
per year. Private companies have now had to revise projections down to 1.8 – 2
tonnes per ha, but even that remains to be achieved.

And worse has come from reports on the ground.

“Until now I haven’t got any seeds from this jatropha. I
feel bad. Now it is almost four years and I am not getting any income. There is
no improvement.” Wanjang Agitok Sangma, in India said.

In northeast India, local farmers and communities were being enticed
to experiment with jatropha. Raju Sona grew jatropha for one year on land he used to grow vegetables for
his family. “No one will buy jatropha. People said if
you have a plantation then surely you have a good market, but we didn’t see
such good market. When I got the message that there was no market, I got
discouraged. I was very upset. I felt very bad. I expected profit. I threw it
[the seeds] away.” He went back to growing food, adding. “If we plant jatropha
we will have a problem because [it means] we have to buy food from outside….
Vegetables are very expensive [so] we can save money with all the things we
grow – we are cultivating potatoes and cabbages. If the land is planted
professionally, it could grow 4 000 to 6 000 cabbages in six months to sell in
the market. This is good land for growing ginger, onions and garlic.”

Another farmer in India, Parindra Gohain (alias),
said: “Until now we have had no income from the jatropha plantation. They told
me it would be two years before we would have income, but it is already three
years. People are a little down now because the whole project is already four
years running and there is no income. I still hope that I will get profit
otherwise I will pull up the plants.

Compromised food security and labour conditions

Some farmers
were tempted to sell their land in return for employment, only to find that the
promised level of pay failed to materialize, and the low earnings left them
unable to buy sufficient food. One farmer in Senegal, Mamadou Bah (alias) said:
“I and the community expected to increase our cash income and revenues by working
on the plantation. Our food is insufficient because we gave away our land. We have
to fight for our rights and find alternatives to fill the gap in food and
livelihoods.”

“Instead of farming their land, people go to
work for the [biofuel] company… There are now fewer farmers involved in farming
their own land. Food is becoming a problem…

The price of food has been increasing every now and then.
The increasing food prices have to do with food shortages within the village
due to lower production on the farms.” Tanzanian farmer Aailyah Nyondo (alias)
said.

In Ghana, Sanatu Yaw told ActionAid: “The shea nuts I am able to pick during the year help me to have my children in school, to buy
cloth and also to supplement the household’s food needs when the harvest from
my husband’s farm runs out. But this year I could not get much because of the
trees that have been cut. Now they have destroyed the trees so we have lost a good source of income forever, yet
we have not been paid anything in compensation. That is why I confronted the
white man at the meeting.”

Brazil is
the largest industrial biofuel producer in the developing world, where the
sugar cane (ethanol) plantation industry is well established. However, working
conditions are often poor. Of the one million cane workers, about half are
employed as cutters, mostly done by hand, in intense heat for long hours; and a number of
deaths have been reported. The government’s own investigations uncovered virtual
slave labour conditions, exploitative subcontracting systems, poor sanitation
and food, unfit drinking water and overcrowded living conditions. In one
investigation, the team rescued 11 000 labourers working in unacceptable
conditions.

Unfortunately,
all of the figures currently used in EU legislation in the recently agreed
Renewable Energy Directive (RED) are out-of-date, and over-optimistic about the
carbon emissions and energy savings of the biofuels. I shall deal with the
scientific evidence on the false accounting on carbon and energy savings on
biofuels that conceal their huge contributions to global warming [5, 6] (Scientists Expose False Accounting for Biofuels,
and Biofuels Waste Energy, SiS 49).

Moratorium
on Industrial biofuels

It is clear
that biofuels are socially unsustainable in competing for land that should be
growing food, increasing food prices and landlessness, causing widespread
hunger, and depriving millions of the poorest of their livelihood. Meanwhile,
evidence from real production data, and new analyses bear out what many
scientists have been saying: most if not all biofuels offer no savings in
energy or carbon emissions, especially when indirect emissions from
deforestation and other land use changes are taken into account, as they should
be.

ActionAid
has reiterated the call for a global moratorium in its recommendations:

·
Moratorium on further expansion of industrial
biofuel production and investment

·
Ensure member states do not lock into industrial
biofuels in their 2010 national action plans

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There are 4 comments on this article so far. Add your comment above.

Anupam Paul Comment left 16th November 2010 19:07:22If we cannot stop consumerism these problems of food and unemployment will be faced by the weaker section of the society particularly the farmers of the South.And that can be realized if we try to understand the real problems of the farmers.I talk about agriculture not agribusiness,corporate farming,contract farming etc.Is it really necessary to own more than one car or a car? Some families have more than one cars.Can we care for our future generation and unborn children.?? We may well remember the song HEAL THE WORLD OF M Jackson.

mae-Wan Comment left 4th November 2010 10:10:15Hi patriziah, this article is the first in a long series on green power to the people, please look out for the rest.
There are many sustainable options and they are being implemented everyday. The most sustainable option for fuel is methane biogas from anaerobic digestion of organic wastes. It can replace many fuel uses.

patriziah odethe Comment left 4th November 2010 09:09:02Hello, i have a question....so what is being mention in this article is that the BIOFUELS wich are promoted to be better for nature are causing hunger? what can we do about it? shoudl we use normal fuel?...i mean at the end of the day i think both of this types of fuer are damaging human life and nature anyway....is very confusing

Ilyan Comment left 4th November 2010 09:09:08God help us.
Unfortumately God can only produce Ibola in isolated villages. This problem would be solved if it were started it in a busy international airport.